They are the cello duo who started from a self-filmed video that was uploaded to You Tube of them playing Smooth Criminal!
It got 5 million views on You Tube, Elton John saw them and invited them on tour, they've been on the Ellen Degenres show in the US, featured on Glee performing Smooth Criminal and they're now back with an album and tour dates. The album In2ition will be rerleased on the 4th March 2013.
How do you go about choosing the tracks that you want to cover?
It’s very challenging because we need to find tracks that are suitable for the cellos as well as the guest artists. Sometimes we find the right songs and we are very happy because they are also suitable for our guest artists. It’s like every artist that sang or played on the tracks, sounded like it was written for them.
What guest artists have you played with?
On the new album In2ition we had Elton John, Glee actress Naya Riveria and the classical pianist superstar Lang Lang. Also Sky Ferreira, guitar virtuoso Steve Vai and Zuccero.
You have some tour dates coming up in London and Birmingham in March what, can we expect from a 2Cellos gig?
We are mainly a live act so we are happy to play live as much as possible, so you can expect the unexpected.
You both studied music in England, do you enjoy coming back to play?
We love coming back to London, it’s like a second home to us. When we were students it was really expensive to live here and survive. But when we come back it’s nice, we have a lot of history here.
How did you pick the tracks for the album?
We had help from our producer this time and also for instance Elton John. The track we did with him was his suggestion and we asked him if he would sing on the track and he said ok.
It’s different, it’s a very diverse album we have everything from a classical piece by Carl Jenkins, Candle in the Wind by Elton John, Prodigy, Highway to Hell and Fleetwood Mac.
It’s a very diverse album with very diverse guests and that’s what we are all about. We like all kinds of music and we like to share our passion with everyone. All this great music exists so we are very happy.
You have a large following in your native Croatia, do you get to play there much and do you get a special welcome home?
We are very happy because Croatia is very very proud of us and they support us a lot. It’s the first time that someone who is not from sport has made it outside of Croatia and it’s really different for them, so we are happy that they support us and treat us so well.
Are you playing any festivals here this year?
We would like to play all of them. We don’t have anything scheduled yet but hopefully we will.
How much of an impact has your YouTube channels had?
We have 2 channels we have a Vevo channel which is run by our record label and one which is ran by us called 2celloslife where we mainly post our life events.
YouTube changed our life, if there was no YouTube we would never be here, maybe we would in 20 years but it’s happened much quicker.
With Glee as well many young people got to know about us who are into music and music theatre. They saw our Smooth Criminal video and they had a Michael Jackson episode in that season and they invited us to be a guest.
We were the first instrumental act to be featured as a guest on that show which was a big honour for us and it was great, we were very excited.
Why did you choose to put a classical twist on contempory music?
We like all kinds of music from Bach to Michael Jackson, we love all kinds of music and we wanted to do something different with just 2 cellos.
Smooth Criminal was the first thing we did and everything exploded after that, we basically only had that one song. We knew about Apocolyptica, they were covering Metallica but we didn’t really listen to metal music so much.
We play more diverse music than they do, they are mostly focused on metal, we play anything from classical to rock to pop so we’re very different.
You originally started in classical music, do you play much of that repertoire anymore?
Yes we include some pieces in our show and people love it. We played a whole show in Croatia of only classical music recently so we still keep classical music in the set.
How do you keep the variety of sound in tracks with just 2 cellos and no lyrics?
We have to make interesting arrangements with something always happening.
Thank god we play cello because people don’t really know what cellos is capable of. It has such a wonderful arrangement, so many wonderful colours and different colours can be achieved from the instrument.
It can sound as hard as a guitar, it can also sing as beautiful as voice, you can hit it like percussion, you can pluck it with your fingers like guitars, there’s so many possibilities.
Anything else planned?
The album is coming out on the 4th march and we are going to promote the album in London and Birmingham. Then we have tours scheduled in Europe, US, Japan, Asia, Australia. We’re very busy!
Catch 2CELLOS will be live at London’s Bush Hall on 19 March 2013 and Birmingham’s Glee Club on 20 March 2013. The album In2ition will be rerleased on the 4th March 2013.
Tickets on sale HERE
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